The introduction sets out the aim of the book: to set the nursing in the five Crimean War armies into the wider context of the different countries’ military, cultural, political, and economic structures. It describes the imperialist causes of the Crimean War and the war aims of each country, as well as explaining why the book is limited to the Crimean campaign when the war was fought in so many other places. The introduction then indicates how these imperial aims did not have any impact on the nursing. It also explains that the book is organized by systems of nursing rather than by nationalities because the subject matter is transnational.